"It's a SantaCon for people who have been doing it for 10 or 15 years and are tired of it being co-opted by busloads of college kids from upstate or drunken 22-year-olds from the suburbs."
The alternative SantaCon Detour seeks to recapture what Ehmann and others described as the event's countercultural roots as a "dress-up, anti-shop-'til-you-drop culture jam," and not "a bar crawl" or "puke fest."
And!
"If you're a 22-year-old, you're going to see [Detour SantaCon] is going to be a bunch of 50-year-olds," she said. "We wouldn't want them, and they wouldn't want us. They want to be with slutty Santa elves. They want to be drinking in the streets and jumping on taxis."
SantaCon Detour is now in its second year. It will start at the same location as the main SantaCon on Dec. 14, but then the group will go do their own thing.
According to the SantaCon Detour 2013 description at Wherevent:
If you joined up with us last year, you know the program: Trying to SAVE SantaCon by having our own, smaller contingent … This year I plan to, again, hijack a hoard of my Santa friends after the initial meeting location and take them to a spacious place with seats and some brunchy type food (and booze, of course). From there Santa will be on the move to a few fun photo ops and end in the early evening at a venue with drinks and dancing.
[Stock photo by Maria Dryfhout]
